The Problem
Garbage collection runs on fixed schedules and fixed routes. Every Tuesday, the truck drives the same path, picks up the same bins. The problem is obvious: some bins are overflowing days before the truck comes, and some are barely half full when it arrives. One wastes resources, the other makes residents suffer with trash piling up on the street.
Nobody is giving the collectors real information about what is actually happening on the ground. They just follow the plan. The data gap between "this bin is full right now" and "the truck will come on Thursday" is where the waste happens — both literal and operational.
The Idea
Geo-location services are getting really good right now. Every phone knows exactly where it is. So we build a tool that makes it dead simple for residents to report garbage issues — overflowing bins, illegal dumping, missed pickups — tied to their exact location. One tap, done.
On the collector side, all the reports show up on a map in real-time. Instead of following the same old route, they can see where the actual problems are and make data-driven decisions. Maybe skip a street that is fine and hit the one with three overflowing bins first. Over time, the data also shows patterns — which areas fill up faster, which routes need to be adjusted.
The UX Challenge
Reporting needs to be so easy that people actually do it. If it takes more than a few seconds, nobody will bother. The web app uses Leaflet.js with your current location pre-filled, so it is basically one tap to submit a report.
But I want to push this even further. I bind the reporting into a Pebble Watch — you can report an overflowing bin just by twisting your wrist while walking past it. No phone to pull out, no app to open. The demo video only shows the web UI, but the watch integration is the part I am most excited about. The lower the friction, the more data you get, and the more useful the system becomes.
How It Fits Together
- Resident side: Web app (Leaflet.js map) or Pebble Watch — report garbage issues with geo-location in one action
- Collector side: Map dashboard showing all reports in real-time, so they can optimize routes on the fly
- Data layer: Open data APIs for map tiles and city infrastructure, reports stored with timestamps and coordinates
Technology Stack
- Map & frontend: Leaflet.js
- Data: OpenAPI, OpenData
- Wearable: Pebble Watch (wrist-twist to report)
What I Think About This
The technical part is not complex. Leaflet, some APIs, a watch app. What makes this interesting is the system design thinking — the whole value chain from a resident noticing a full bin to a collector changing their route. The technology is just the glue. The insight is that garbage collection is a data problem disguised as a logistics problem. Once you have real-time ground truth, the optimization becomes possible.